The Book And The Brotherhood

'They don't, lots of them die.'

They had been tramping across the grass whose longer blades appeared here and there above the snow, outstretched like little green ribbons hatched over with crosses made by the frost.

Jenkin had been busily making conversation, trying to stir Tamar's attention, pointing things out to her, the tracks of animals, the perfect shape of a leafless oak, a small holly bmis covered with red berries in the hedge that bordered the meadow. Now they had reached the river and looked down in silence at the stiff frozen shapes of broken water plants whirr rose out of the quite thick fringe of ice which bordered either bank. In the centre the river rushed, fierce, silent, fast, fed by other snows, and black, black in between its edges of ice and snow.

Tamar looked down, lowering her head and fumbling at the knot of her scarf, then pulling the scarf more closely forward over her brow.

Jenkin had been watching Tamar since their arrival at Boyars. He shared the common knowledge of her troubles, he so acutely felt, now, her sadness, her unapproachable remote. ness, he wished he could 'do something' for her. He had known her all her life, but never well, had never figured as 'jolly uncle Jenkin', or as someone in whom she might confide or trust. Jenkin, for all his schoolmasterly talents, had never achieved with Tamar, as child or adult, the easy and authoritative relationship which Gerard enjoyed with her.

While Jenkin was wondering what topic of conversation to try next, Tamar suddenly

said, 'Do you think Jean will come back to Duncan?'

He said at once, 'Yes, of course. Don't let that make you sad!'

`Has he heard from her just lately?'

`Well – he had a solicitor's letter, but he wrote saying he loved her and expected her back, and there's been nothing since, which must be a good sign. That other thing can't last – it didn't before and it won't now. She'll be back!' Jenkin was not sure whether he really felt this confidence, but he wanted to reassure Tamar.

`It's such a pity they never had children,' she said, still looking down at the river, 'but perhaps they never wanted any, not everyone does.'

`Duncan certainly did, he was longing for a child. I'm not sure about Jean.'

`Oh look – isn't that a dead cat?'

Something humpy and streaky and dark was tumbled by in the fierce rush of the river. It was a dead cat. 'No, no,' said Jenkin, 'it's a bundle of reeds. Come on, let's go back. Why, I think it's starting to snow again.'

Lily had finished lacing her boots, but was sitting paralysed, watching the distant gyrations of Rose and Gerard. `Come on,' said Gulliver, 'or are you funking it? Never mind, I'll have a try. Pray for me.'

He rose to his feet, balanced upon the ridiculously thin edges of the skates, which at once sunk into the snowy grass. Stretching both arms out to balance himself and lifting up each foot carefully he made his way down the slope. Unfortunately there was nothing to hold onto, no friendly tree extending a sturdy branch. Near to the brink, he thrust one foot forward onto the ice. The foot rejected the hard slippery alien surface, declining to plant itself firmly as a foot ought to, but moving uneasily, slipping away, turning feebl^y over on its side. Gulliver withdrew the foot. If only he could stand on the ice for a moment or two he might manage to move cautiously forward in some reasonably skaterly manner. After all, he could skate, that is ^he had proceeded on skates in an upright position for short distances on ice rinks of his youth. He edged carefully ibrward a little so that both his skates were embedded at the verge of the ice, which was not at all clean-cut, but a messy area where humpy earth and grass were covered with a brittle mix of ice and snow. Here he again got one foot forward onto the smoother ice. But the other foot, taking his weight for a moment, had sunk a centimetre or two deeper into the earthy perimeter. The problem of removing it while balancing on the forward foot seemed insoluble. In calm despair, with arms outstretched, Gulliver gazed ahead of him into the red dusk. He thought, I can't go forward, I can't get back, I shall have to sit down. Thank God Rose and Gerard are somewhere else, I can't even see them. At that moment a hand appeared and took hold of his outstretched hand. Lily had evidently ventured down to the edge behind him.

Gulliver gripped the supportive hand and by some miraculous manoeuvre managed to get his other foot onto the ice, while resting quite a lot of weight upon Lily's hand, and now upon her arm which had also appeared beside him. He was standing! He let go of Lily and began to walk upon the ice, not sliding but walking, balancing as on stilts. Now, how did one get going? His legs resisted the desire of his ankles to turn quietly over, his expensive boots bore him stiffly up, his stomach, his diaphragm, his shoulders, his pendant arms, sought intently for a certain rhythmical movement, a leaning and a swaying, a distribution of the weight, so that the feet, used after all to taking turns on terra firma, could in this weird and artificial predicament, proceed to a harmonious cooperation. Gulliver inclined himself forward, advancing one skate, then as it slid a little and took his weight, with an instinctively remembered motion bringing on its fellow. He was still upright! He could do it! He was skating!

At that moment somebody appeared beside him and said, ^`Well done!' It was Lily. She moved past him. She was skating too. What was more, and Gulliver somehow took this in instantly, not only could she skate, but she could skate very well indeed. Lily was now in front of him, moving backwards. He saw in the crimson twilight her face under her black fur hat, with reddened cheeks and nose, bright with triumphant joy, She made a little circle, then a larger one, then with a wave set off across the ice at an astonishing speed. Gulliver sat down abruptly.

Rose and Gerard, who had been skating together holding hands at the farther end of the meadow where a few villagers, mainly young boys, still lingered, were returning toward the centre when they met Lily. They heard her before they saw her, since Lily as she was released into an element which suited her perfectly, uttered, as her speed increased, a loud cry, like a savage bird's cry, or the aggressive scream uttered by Japanese masters of the martial arts. Lily, with a group from her school, had learnt to skate as a child at the rink at Queensway. The others gave up, she stayed, she had, a teacher told her, a natural talent, she learnt to dance, she learnt to leap, she won a competition. For a short time skating seemed a means of dominating the world; but somehow she never really believed in it, the glamorous enclosure of the ice rink was a dream palace which she always left with a sense of doom, a secret artificial place which made the squalor of her real place more awful by contrast. It brought her no social life, and she lacked the will and confidence to take up the challenge of becoming even better. So the pursuit lost its charm amid the miseries and muddles of her student life, and when the money came and she had so many gratifications and so little sense of the value of anything it did not occur to her to return to what now seemed like a phase of her girlhood. Her paralysis in the scene at the water meadow arose from a sudden painful memory, as her hands touched the laces of the boots, of her younger unspoilt self; also, like Gull, she was not at all sure she would be able to do it. Of course she would still be able to skate, but would she still be able to skate very well? The wild scream expressed her instant discovery that her talent had not abandoned her.

Just before Lily appeared, swift as an arrow or an announcing angel in the middle of the ice, Rose had suggested to Gerard that they might now, since almost everyone had gone, put on some waltz music on their side of the meadow and dance, as they always did, had done for years and years in winters when the ice was hard. They both danced well, but were tactfully anxious not to impose their display upon other enjoyers of the ice. Now when they had the meadow almost to themselves they might evoke the sudden magic of the music in the winter picture. Gerard and Rose had also, with tact, kept well away from Gull and Lily so as not to risk being witnesses of their perhaps more modest performance. Now, suddenly, mere was Lily Boyne, flashing past them, returning from a distance at express speed, waving one leg while spinning on title foot, leaping high into the air and landing on the tips of her skates, seeming to move not on the surface of the ice but above it. Gerard cried out, 'Lily, Lily, you're a star!

Rose watched the acrobatics, then decided quickly. She said to Gerard, 'You dance with Lily.' Then she sped away at her own fastest pace in the direction of the base camp. A few moments later the music of Strauss transformed the scene.

Gulliver had not arisen after his sudden descent, he had no wish now to explore his recovered ability any